Callum McGregor spoke to the mainstream media after Celtic went to Easter Road last night and left with all three points in an excellent team performance, especially in an exciting opening half. With theRangers dropping points at home to Aberdeen it was a satisfying night all round.
The win means that Celtic are the first team in the league to win four matches in a row as we are starting to see Ange Postecoglou’s philosophies bearing fruit. The Celtic captain believes the team has taken great strides over the past few weeks. “I think we just continue to look at ourselves,” the Celtic midfielder said as reported by stv.
“Since we’ve come back from the international break we’ve been outstanding. Even second half tonight we showed another side to our game when we need to dig in and work for each other. You always have moments like that in games so as good as the first half was, the second half was equally as important for the group to know that we can really dig in and see the game out,” Calmac said.
“We’ll just continue to keep working hard and getting better. The manager keeps putting those demands on us so I’m sure he’ll continue to do that.”
When questioned about the ensuing title race, McGregor was keen to emphasise that with the league currently only a quarter of the way through it is far too early to be thinking about the end game.
“It’s still early doors,” he said. “We were probably on the receiving end of those questions a few weeks ago before the international break and you see how quickly it can turn. By no means do we start to look at the end game.
“It’s a quarter of the way through the season and there’s so much football to be played. The good thing about this team is that I still think there’s improvement in it as well. We’ll keep putting demands on each other to get better and better and I think you saw the fruits of that tonight.
“I think we just look at ourselves. We look at our fixtures and where we can get points and we approach every game to get maximum points and to keep getting better.
“This is a completely new team and we’re still finding out just how good we could be.
“We’re not looking elsewhere, we’re just looking within the building and trying to push each other every day. I spoke about the manager putting demands on us and that’s what he’s doing. I think you can see the players responding to that and responding to the challenge as well because there’s so many young ones in the team to develop.
“Once we get that right, who is to say how good we can be?”
It’s great to hear our captain speaking sensibly and not getting drawn into title race talk at this stage of the season. He is 100% correct when he discusses not looking elsewhere and focusing solely on what is happening internally.
As he said this is fundamentally a completely new team from last year and as a group they are probably still adapting to each other never mind the club and the whole Scottish football environment. There is still plenty of room for improvement in this team which is a hugely exciting thought going forward.
One game at a time Celtic.
Conall McGinty
